Mole crickets on the menu (Image: Dave Stock for New Scientist)
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Why not eat insects, asked Vincent M. Holt in his 1885 pamphlet, in which he posited creepy-crawlies as the answer to the dietary inadequacies of the "working man". ?
At Edible Insects - Food for the Future?, a culinary event and discussion in the restaurant of London's Natural History Museum on Friday, I confronted Holt's question directly, with an entr?e of fried mole crickets in barbecue seasoning served with the desiccated larvae of the mealworm beetle Tenebrio molitor. ?? ?
Now I had always thought Holt's treatise a sensible prospect. I was used to the thought of mealworms as a food source - I had fed hundreds to birds as a zoology undergraduate. And there's a long, international tradition of us humans chowing down on our arthropod friends. Fried crickets are a delicacy across South Asia, gnat burgers called "kungu cakes" go down well around Lake Victoria, some Amazonian tribes fry tarantulas over open fires, and the aboriginal people of Australia do a mean witchetty grub.
That is a tradition I had already experienced. On a trip to Indonesia I was treated to the lemony taste of ant abdomen, and discussed the relative culinary merits of hymenopteran life stages with a local guide (the youngest bee larvae are the sweetest - they get progressively saltier as they age).
Tonight, though, I would be eating insects in large amounts and the familiar surroundings of a London restaurant. As the dishes arrived at my table to the nervous giggles of my co-diners, I confess I was having second thoughts.
You see, I like mole crickets. They're cute, with their moley little legs, adapted to excavate underground chambers where males sing to attract females. "They dig and feed on worms - just like moles. They're fantastic," says entomologist Stuart Hine of the Natural History Museum, though at that stage I didn't know whether he was referring to their ecology or taste.
(Image: Dave Stock for New Scientist)
Hine pointed out I'd probably eaten many more insects than I thought. "We can't keep insects out of our foodstuffs," he announced, pointing to thresholds of permissible insect parts in food. "Fragments of legs, antennae, wing cases...inevitably things get through".
An average of 60 or more insect fragments per 100 grams of chocolate are permitted under European Union regulations. Fancy a canned citrus fruit juice? Expect 5 or more Drosophila and other fly eggs in 250 millilitres, or 1 maggot per 250 ml.
With this in mind, I tucked into my main course of bamboo worms (they tasted like bitter cheese), fried giant crickets (an unexpected "double crunch" sensation), and fried weaver ants (like eating fine hair).
As I picked yet another antenna from between my teeth, I wondered how much I was actually digesting. "There's more fat in the larval forms than in adults," says Hine. "But the adults have chitin exoskeletons with complex sugars, vitamins and minerals. We digest the softer parts, but can't digest harder parts like beetle wing cases. Presumably a good amount passes through."
This is one reason insects probably do not provide the solution to the 1 billion people around the world without sufficient food, says Meredith Alexander of development charity ActionAid. "The problem is distribution," she says. "There are lots of things that will need to change to feed everyone in the world, but switching to insects probably isn't one of them."
After my main course, I perused the insect exhibit by the restaurant which included such alcohol-preserved oddities as a giant locust clutching a mouse; and the 15-centimetre larva of an elephant beetle, which my mind began morphing, cartoon-style, into a giant hot-dog.
(Image: Dave Stock for New Scientist)
The comparison wasn't lost on one of the evening's guest speakers, Daniel Creedon, head chef at London's Archipelago restaurant, where diners can expect a veritable safari of culinary delights, including bees poached in fern honey, chocolate scorpion, and garlic and chilli locusts and crickets, as well as the more "regular" dishes like zebra, wildebeest and crocodile.
"It was touch-and-go whether I'd take the job as chef," says Creedon. "I was cooking insects for three weeks before I dared taste one." He says the restaurant aims to cook interesting, rather than balanced meals. "I like to cook good food, within the constraints that I'm under. It has to be exotic and interesting."
The mole crickets had turned out to be lovely - gamey, like beef-flavoured crisps (though one diner said they were like "a combination of wet dung and fingernails").? A dessert of mint chocolate with embedded ants followed, cleansing the palate for an enlightening after-dinner discussion on the ethics of eating insects. ?
So why not eat insects? Well, after my evening out, I'm convinced there's no real taste issue. I quite fancy serving up fried crickets and might even expand my horizons from insects to arachnids with fried tarantula or chocolate-covered scorpions.
But you would have to eat a lot of weaver ants to feel full. For now, when I'm looking for a substantial meal I'm going to stick to steak and chips.
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